Sylvia Thompson

Diagnosed with advanced colon cancer on her birthday in 2005, Sylvia Thompson discovered the healing power of creative writing through her illness. She teaches meditation, Reiki, Chakra and Color Therapy and takes part in a women’s Kabbalah study group in her community. Her book In the Garden of Illness I sit by the Well of Hope is available through www.shadowpoetry.com  and www.lulu.com . Her personal web site is http://myspace.com/thompsonpoetry

HOPE FOR TOMORROW

Today, advice echoed

  someone’s failure;

“positive attitude”

took hope away;

gentle lies drowned sunlight,

judgment burned a tongue.

Realistic thinking was soothing

it’s own fear,

pity denied compassion:

“How are you?” made questions

of tomorrows.

Unsolicited prayer

damned a God of choice;

volunteering the story of another

swallowed a soul.

Tomorrow, only the heart will speak.

Hands will touch truth;

eyes will ask for permission

to be silent, will say:

“Tell me what you need.”

….ECTOMY

Not able

to endure the hardship

of this barrenness, his mind

wants to break

camp like an early settler

not knowing how

to work the soil,

imaging ripe land

elsewhere.

He knows

she offered up

to the Gods flesh

carrying within potential

to nourish the world

sacrificed

on the alter of stainless steel

to the God of survival.

In the distance

the dawn of his mind

edges up

to the not yet

visible dunes

landscaping his soul.

Faintly sensing the echo

of a Bedouins love song

for his land.

ENLIGHTENMENT

I prayed to the Heavens

for a great teacher

dignifying, enlightening and steady.

With desperate pleas,

in silent conveyance,

that I, the student, was ready.

And so the heavens,

obliged to my need,

sent a great teacher

to answer.

When I asked him his name,

he smiled at me warmly,

bowed down to me

and said:

CANCER.